About Larry Sand

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a nonpartisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

West Virginia’s public schools are not academic standouts. Far from it, in fact. The state’s 8th graders ranked 45th nationwide in reading on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Also, according to the state scorecard, 88 percent of West Virginia’s 116 high schools “do not meet standards” in math. In view of

In case you weren’t around for the radical tomfoolery in the 1960s, you’re now seeing the sequel. This time, however, with the ubiquity of social media, the latest incarnation has spread roughly at the speed of light. Using the horrific shooting deaths of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida

America’s teachers union leaders typically don’t like secretaries of education. At all. They see the cabinet position as a teenager views a chaperone—a scold who will at least try to keep them from making a bigger mess of things than they already have. And according to union bosses, Betsy DeVos is the Chaperone from Hell.